


And All Forgot Her True Face

by Mythalenaste



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Andruil references, F/M, Solavellan, slightly cross post break up Lavellan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3702525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythalenaste/pseuds/Mythalenaste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I headcanon that my Lavellan is so cross after the break up and after talking to You Know Who-Bellanar that she goes on a dragon slaying bender. Near death and panicky Solas kisses ensue…</p>
            </blockquote>





	And All Forgot Her True Face

_“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”_   ** _~ Mary Shelley_**

* * *

**  
**  
The dragon was in it’s death throes, one leg bent beneath it as it screamed it’s agony into the sky. The sound stunned Solas, made his head spin and swim with the pitch and tenor of the creature’s pain. Massive wings beat the air, dragging them forward. Cassandra battered herself against the dragon’s chest, trying to find purchase for her blade in amongst the scales. Solas poured magic into the barriers around her and Cole, sparing a brief thought for the Inquisitor. She had been foolishly keeping out of his reach, not allowing him to cast a barrier for her. It was a silent, childish concession to her anger with him. But then, he’d heard Vivienne chiding her for the same action, heard her sullen reply of ‘ _When I was a hunter, I got along just fine without barriers_ ’. A death wish, then. **  
**

Lavellan lunged from cover as the dragon turned, her onyx and silverite armour catching the pallid sunlight. The dragon bellowed a challenge as her poison tipped arrows crackling with red corruption sought the vulnerable flesh between armored plates, the fury that was surely on the Inquisitor’s face hidden from view by her helm.

_“Andruil put on armor made of the Void, and all forgot her true face. She crafted weapons of darkness…”_

The dragon lunged and turned, it’s tail sailing just overhead in a vicious sweep that could have broken every bone in her body in an instant and knocking the foolish helmet off with the air from it’s passage, sending Lavellan to her knees. Solas felt fear drive him forward, a bolt of ice catching the dragon in it’s jaw as a crackling lance of electricity struck the ground near his feet. His barrier caught the brunt of it, but not before he heard a panicked  _Solas_! issue from his lover’s throat.  _Pay attention, vhenan._  He wanted to shout it to her, dodging backwards to avoid a desperate claw sweep as the dragon slid and fell, it’s immense body shaking the earth as it thundered to the ground. It screamed again, this time so loud and so close he felt his ears pop with the pressure and pain of it…dizziness clouding his vision even as he saw the pain and confusion and vengeful rage in the animal’s eyes.

_“She howled things meant to be forgotten, and the other gods became fearful Andruil would hunt them in turn.”_

Killing dragons brought him no pleasure, no peace. Neither he nor Cole particularly cared for it…Lavellan had not either, even before, when the marks of Andruil were vivid against her pale skin.  _She kills them because she wants to make Her hurt. They prayed to The Protector and She never answered them. Her People die a thousand deaths and their Goddess does not care. She cannot kill a goddess, would not kill a goddess…but she can kill dragons. She can kill dragons and no one can stop her._ Cole’s words on the subject had been clear, poignant and painful. Damaged faith was a thing more binding and embittering than anything else, powerful enough to slay dragons…

_“So Mythal spread rumors of a monstrous creature and took the form of a great serpent, waiting for Andruil at the base of a mountain. And when the hunter came, Mythal sprang upon her.”_

“Inquisitor!” Cassandra’s shout calls him back to the present and making his heart leap in fear as he searches for Lavellan, her swift surety of step and subtle yet devastating style relies on striking from stealth and though it hides her from the dragon’s sight, it also hides her from his. It takes him a moment of frantic searching, expecting her to be trampled beneath the dragon’s claws or worse before he spots her and hisses in surprise and worry.  _Vhenan, what are you_ doing _?_

Lavellan is dashing up the dragon’s spine, two arrows knocked in her bow and a fierce expression on her bare face. In that moment, she looks more like her gods than she knows: covered in both her own blood and her quarries, teeth bared in a feral snarl and vengeance and strength and power in every slim, athletic line of her body. Defiant and filled with false righteousness as she fires the arrows into the soft flesh beneath armoured scales.

_“They fought for three days and three nights, Andruil slashing deep gouges in the serpent’s hide…”_  
  


It goes wrong in an instant.

One moment, Lycanae is knocking her arrow and drawing it back for the killing shot and the next, a wing knocks her into the cliff side, sending her bow spinning out of her hands. Cole screams with sympathetic pain. The dragon is shrieking with rage and pain, lunging at her like a cat pouncing on a mouse. It’s maw crackles with blue purple lightning as it pulls it’s head back to deliver the final, crushing blow to the stunned elf beneath it’s claws. Solas fadesteps instinctually, upon her in an instant, casting the barrier to save his proud, foolish heart from the folly of own wrath.

Cassandra roars and drives her sword into the dragon’s breast as the barrage of lightning strikes off his barrier like a hammer against an anvil, eating away at the protective shield as he kneels beside the Inquisitor, heedless of the tempest crackling around them. She’s frighteningly still as he checks for broken bones, the dragon making the ground shake as it finally falls with Cassandra’s sword in it’s heart.  _Don’t be dead, vhenan, not now. Not like this. I should have forced her to listen, I never should have let her out of my sight-_

“Vhenan?! Look at me, Lycanae.” Her eyes are struggling to focus, the fierce and unnatural bright green flickering as her eyelids flutter. He holds her face in his hands, patting her cheek with slightly more force than necessary to try and keep her awake. She seems, against all odds, to be mostly unharmed; just shocked. Her hands reach up and fist in his vest, trying to hold herself upright. “Look at me, please.”

“Sol…Solas? What happened?” Her voice gained more strength and with it, more fire. “Why are you here?”

“I cast the barrier that saved your life.” He said softly, pain searing his mind as he realised he’d have to put distance between them. She saw it too, confusion flattening to mute carelessness. She let go of his vest, pushing herself up to a sitting position.

“I’m sorry you had to do that.” Solas stared at her, tried to catch the too bright gaze that was now avoiding his as she catalogued aches and pains. He deserved this, he knew. Saving her life did not make up for what she felt had been taken from her, did not negate the pain he had caused.

“You should not have been so foolish. You could have died.” What if he had not been there? Would Vivienne or Dorian have been fast enough? What if he had not pushed to join her today, what if he’d stayed at camp? What would he have done when the others carried her body back to him, lifeless and pale and gone? He could not have borne the pain of it…

“I have been facing death since I joined the Inquisition. If my death comes, then it comes. I expect it would not trouble you overmuch, you have gotten all you can from me-” He cannot bear her passionless voice, her carefully maintained distance for another second.

His lips on her’s silence her and he feels her tense, a second of resistance before melting against him, meeting his eager kiss with her own, a fist wrapped tightly in the cord at his throat. She tastes like blood and sweat and ash, like fury and fight and all the emotions she is hiding from him behind a mask of impassivity. He clutches her to him with all the fear and lust and wanting and love he feels for her, tries to impart it in a gesture that he cannot give voice to. He wants to lose himself in her, to see her always at her best: Laughing, clever and so much more than this fierce, colourless automaton she has become to shield herself from him. _Please, ma vhenan…do not lose yourself…_

“Ir abelas.” He whispers it against her mouth, feels her stiffen as she realises that this kiss was a mere momentary lapse. As he pulls her back to a world where he has left her, where her vallas’lin are gone, where her faith is as broken and as dead as the dragon before them.

She breaks the kiss, pushes him hard enough to send him sprawling backwards. She’s up, too quickly for her injured body to handle without protest, going to her knees before rising once more and storming away from him. He watches her stride past the dead dragon to snatch up her helm and put it on, hiding her face from view. The brief moment of truth is gone, shattered.

“A sacrifice to gods who do not listen. Wasteful death is all they cherish. It was frightened…at the end.” Cole’s voice is soft and the inquisitor seems to hesitate for a moment. Solas rises to his feet, steps away from the pool of dragon blood that spreads inexorably across the marshy ground, too viscous to soak through just yet.  She does not look to him as she rips Cassandra’s sword free with a jerk, tossing it to the human woman and retrieving her bow. She knocks an arrow and fires it between the dragon’s once jewel like eyes, already clouding with the glassiness of death.

“Inquisitor?”

“Have the agents come clean this up. We’re done here.”

_“Andruil, blood and force. We pray to you in humility and fear: spare us your wrath. Let us not become your sacrifice.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always welcome and very appreciated <3 :D


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